Queen's Rangers

The Queen's American Rangers was a military unit of partisan hunters loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War, existing from 1776 to 1802. The Queen's Rangers were led by Robert Rogers, who recruited men that he described as "mean sorts", including negroes, Indians, trackers, and brawlers, and they were little more than a group of mercenaries used by the British during the war. John Graves Simcoe replaced Rogers as commander in October 1777, and the rangers would fight for the British until the surrender at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781.

History
The Queen's Rangers were raised in August 1776 in Staten Island with 937 officers and men, organized into eleven companies of 30 troops each. The rangers were led by the French and Indian War hero Robert Rogers, and the rangers were a mixture of American Tories (loyalists), freed slaves, criminals, and Native Americans, with the Abenaki warrior Awasos serving as Rogers' second-in-command. The rangers' first battle was at the Battle of Mamaroneck on 22 October 1776, where John Haslet's Delaware Continental Army troops made a night attack on the Queen's Rangers and killed many of them. The Rangers were also involved in the ambush and massacre of a unit of Connecticut dragoons under Benjamin Tallmadge, and Rogers was fired from command after he ambushed a prisoner exchange in hopes of killing Tallmadge, the only survivor of the ambush. After Rogers was removed from command, John Graves Simcoe became the new commander of the Queen's Rangers, leading the unit at the Battle of Brandywine, Simcoe's Raid, and from 1780 to 1781 the unit was active in the South after operating from New York City. In 1781, the unit was captured at the Siege of Yorktown, and in 1783 the unit headed to Nova Scotia at the war's end and was disbanded. In 1791, Simcoe re-created the unit while serving as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and the unit helped in making new trails and building Fort York. The unit was disbanded in 1802 and replaced by the York Militia.